Make leveling matter again

Community General Discussion
1

This game is so laughably abandoned pre max level

Leveling is entirely defunct. For all intents and purposes, the game virtually does not start until you are 70. And then your ilevel or whatever unspired system they tack on for a given expansion is effectively your character level.

Years of content and systems just sunset for no good reason other than a mutibillion company lacks the creativity and talent to make non max level content relevant.

I get excited to fall back in love with WoW and level a new toon just to get the biggest ick imaginable every time i load an alt up:

  • Chromie time is filled with bugs
  • Enchants are unreasonably restricted, both due to bugs and design oversights
  • ~5 million subscribers yet somehow level 50 bg queues take an hour to pop, sure ok
  • BG queues are allegedly broken, even at max level. A match will start with unfilled teams, only for people to join mid match who have been waiting in queue longer than me? That makes no sense.
  • You are WEAKER in instanced content sometimes because scaling is broken pre 70

I could go on. What gives blizzard?

Update 4/18/24: wowhead just announced the following updates to exp https://www.wowhead.com/news/level-faster-than-ever-to-70-in-the-war-within-massive-reduction-in-xp-338815#comments

One comment really hit the nail on the head, essentially reiterating the point I’ve made a few times–What is the point of leveling?

Honestly, at point are we just given a free option to select if we want to start with a max level character or not?

With they always making it quicker to get to max level, the time you play from level 1 to current expansion goes so quick. Even for the most casual or newest player, leveling is so fast that they don’t learn anything about their class, spec, or role. They hit the current expansion as clueless as if they had just bought the character at the expansion’s starting level, and they’re basically naked since they level too fast to gain appropriate rewards.

It really gets to a point where, eventually, leveling will just be a useless time sink for experienced players, and a pointless barrier to entry for new players.

At this point just give an option to start at the bottom end level of the new expansion (e.g. level 60 in dragonflight). Everything before that is defunct. Making the players pay to bypass a part of the game that has discontinued support, yet you still have to subscribe to slog through it, is just a really scummy and out of touch move made on your customers.

TLDR: Either add depth and purpose back to pre expansion content or make it entirely optional.

13 Likes
2

PvP is never a good way to level, for one thing. For another, pvp is dead in this game because it is unfair to those who cannot or refuse to no life pvp.

4 Likes
3

I actually like leveling. I hardly see anyone ever. Doesn’t feel like an MMO.

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4

That’s the issue. I don’t just want to LEVEL. There’s no rush. I want to PLAY. I want to explore. I want to gradually progress as I go from zone to zone, quest to quest all while trickling instanced content here and there.

IT’S AN RPG,BLIZZARD, LET ME RPG

Classic WoW shouldn’t be the answer to willful negligence on blizzard’s part. And even classic is starting to lose it’s luster because of the go go go min/max grindset that plagues this game

Doesn’t even feel like an RPG these days. It’s just an amusement park mmo

4 Likes
5

Well, when it comes to that, they cant force people to want to pvp while leveling

And you cant pvp yourself

2 Likes
6

It always was unless you were twinking.

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7

And now you can’t even twink intuitively because the game receives no support pre 70 :upside_down_face:

Borderline exploiting the game features to find BiS gear, just to queue a total of 3 or 4 queues
over the span of several hours that will make you outlevel all of your twink gear

Twinking is dead

8

This was always a twinking thing.

This was due to players complaining.

It is, but it was never a widely popular thing anyway.

2 Likes
9

As someone who is currently leveling about 30 or so alts, I disagree. You can use chromie and go anywhere you want to level, save for the newest xpac.

Never once looked at or cared about this. Unless you’re doing end game content or Mythics/raids, it really doesn’t matter.

That most people have never done simply because it’s not end game content and it’s “boring.”

I’ve taken all of my characters through Chromie time hopping and haven’t come across a single bug.

Not many people do bgs to my understanding. Certainly not me.

As someone who primarily does nothing but quest and level through Chromie, I’ve personally experienced no issues. Not saying you haven’t, just giving my experience since this is the main thing I do.

2 Likes
10

I made a suggestion a long time ago related to leveling. I mean leveling will never be as important as the endgame. Never was, never will be. Most people level up to reach the endgame. No other reason.

My idea was to sort of revamp all questing zones. I mean it’s already mostly done, with the journal guiding you to do the zone main quest(s). Why not at the end of each chain, you get some mogs that are either zone-themed or quest themed. But you know, actually nice looking mogs not some reskinned crap. Kind of like let’s say the stuff you get from that archeology minigame, that level of quality. And if that’s not enough some fluff on the side, but again, zone specific, like take that flower bracelet you can get, I saw people with it, get a fel flower version from outland. And so on.

In the end it’s all about the rewards. People do old content for this stuff, mogs and titles but those are at the high end of the respective expansion, via raids or, not even sure what to call the Warfront stuff. Why not let them have some good stuff while they are casually leveling?

3 Likes
11

This is entirely intentional. Blizzard does not value leveling. It only exists because MMO’s have leveling. Without the world, would this still be a “World” of Warcraft? The only purpose of leveling is to fast forward new players and alts into end game so they can experience “Esports Lobbies of Warcraft.”

Features we have yet to figure out.

Intentional. They don’t want lower levels to be able to enchant their gear. They don’t want players to do old crafting. And they don’t want people to make hyper timewalking sets.

Seriously, level 50? Leveling in bgs sucks, the xp is so slow. It’s almost as though it’s intentionally been turned into a playground for party sync groups that the anchor character doesn’t even have to enter.

Yep.

This is supposed to inspire you to play harder and longer. Are you feeling it?

6 Likes
12

They could start by returning our levels.

13

I agree. What I enjoyed about doing the Meta Achievement was that the world was filled with players again.

14

Welcome to every MMORPG that has been popular (by active players) in the history of MMORPGs.

1 Like
15

Right now you can’t unlock Legion because the scenario is bugged. :dracthyr_cry_animated:

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Just noticing the default leveling zone isn’t even Shadowlands, it’s still BFA :sob::sob::sob:

Tell me you’re embarrassed by your own work without telling me you’re embarrassrd by your own work @blizz

This is just so funny to me. Two entirely different eras with completely different ilvls and standards and they just messily shlop them together

17

How would someone even go about fixing retail leveling?

It’s beyond cooked

18

I have never once enjoyed the process of leveling in 25 years.

I didn’t like it in classic. I didn’t like it originally when I started in TBC. At least current retails gives me the option of not being as bored for as long.

Leveling stopped being a main point of WoW in TBC.

1 Like
19

They’re incentivised to make leveling as nasty and unpleasant as possible so people will buy boosts.

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as someone with about 100 characters total, I dont want leveling to take more time than it does. lol.
If I need it to be slow, I’ll turn of EXP for a while here and there.

what does need to be fixed in scaling. This one shotting crap that SHOULD be able to dent my armor while level up to 60 is BORING